Hello Villagers!

This release was originally going to focus only on home and village improvements, but I somewhat accidentally found myself hunting and destroying dozens of bugs instead.

Frankly, all this bugfixin’ work was long overdue, so I decided to change gears and make it my new priority for this update. In total I fixed around 50 bugs which should go a long way to making the game feel more stable and professional. I’ll continue working on home / town building in the next release.

Anyway, here are the full patch notes!

Home Improvement & Town Building

Vastly improved the look of the player house exterior and surrounding area

Redid the interior (tileset and furniture) of the player home

Redesigned and moved shops on main street to prepare them for future upgrades

New Homestead Upgrade: Clean out the polluted pond so you can use it for fishing

New Homestead Upgrade: You can now move your garden from Agrarian Acres to just outside your house

Added a new system that can change the look and feel of the village as it evolves over time

The village is now evaluated and ranked each week. Speak with Jaclyn in Town Hall for more info

Graphics & UI

Redesigned and improved many of the buildings and decor of Main Street

Added chimney smoke effects to buildings in the village

Added a large number of new external lanterns and street lights

Improved interior lighting of many villager homes

Improved the look and colorization of the interior tileset

Improved the shadowing for trees and other vegetation

Improved the look of “New Dialogue” notification

Improved the look of room transitions

Improved camera movement when used in cutscenes

Improved dialogue box movement in cutscenes

New & Improved Features

Modified the fishing minigame so that the hit bar doesn’t shrink as much

Game Saves (Important!)

As I warned in a previous news update, any saves made before this release are not compatible with the new stuff. This means you’ll need to start a new game, though you will be able to import some key items (your wallet, inventory, etc.) from your old save.

This should be the last time I have to break save comparability while in Early Access.

The entire save / load system has been redone to be more robust and even faster for slower systems

Players who have an existing save can import some items – like silver, inventory items, etc. – into their new save by interacting with the suitcase in the player’s room at the inn

The previous version, v0.65, will remain available as a Steam beta branch. Password: previousversion

Gardening

The vast majority of my time these past 4 weeks has been spent on improving the shamefully neglected Gardening hobby. To call it an “overhaul” seems an underestimate – the old system wasn’t just improved, it was deleted and replaced entirely by something more fun and interesting.

The changes are too big and numerous to fully capture in a change log… but I tried to anyway. Grab some seeds, head over to Agrarian Acres, and take a look yourself!

Gardening is now performed via a special UI that’s accessible when interacting with a garden bed

Garden beds now show a little preview of what’s growing in them (including any weeds)

Each plant can be inspected and interacted with via this new screen. Your options depend on your Gardening Abilities

You may now Cultivate plants in your garden. This allows you to perform actions such as watering the plant, adding items to the soil, etc. in order to encourage its growth

Cultivation effects linger (usually a day or two) after being implemented. Look at the plant’s details to see how long it lasts

At first, you can only water your plants to provide a modest boost. As you level up you’ll gain new ways to cultivate your plants

You can also cultivate soil with any item in your inventory. This provides a random effect, and may be better – or worse – than just watering them

Plants can now breed to create new plants automatically

In general, your garden needs one open space, a male plant, and a female plant in order for plants to breed. Both parents must also be a certain level of growth first.

Basic crossbreeding has been added: the look and base plant attributes are based on the mother plant, while growth rates are based on the father plant

There is a very rare chance that the offspring plant will instead be a Hybrid. This is a new type of plant specific to the pairing

Hybrid are rare and very valuable. They are, however, “infertile” and cannot be used to breed again

A huge number of new plants can now be grown in your garden

A small number of existing plants have been eliminated or combined with other plants

All plant sprites have been improved and in some cases completely redone. This includes both mature and in-progress versions

Each plants now have one or more Tags. These specify certain attributes for that particular plant

Plants are now rated like critters and fish. Ratings depend on your skill as a gardener, and a higher rated item sells for more silver

A number of new seasonal plants have been added to the forage list

Plants can now be pruned from your garden. This allows you to remove a still-growing plant

Pruning has a chance of refunding plant seeds back in your inventory (higher chance if just planted)

This new screen can be used to plant new plants, inspect existing plants, clear out weeds, and more

A new info screen now displays key details about your plan including its stage, what each stage looks like, when it was planted, whether it’s under any special effects, and so on

Spores / Seeds have been renamed to simply “Starters”

Wild mushrooms and plants now spawn a little more rarely

Growth rates for all plants have been adjusted. In general, it takes longer for an untended plant to grow to maturity

The Spore Extractor has been renamed to the Seed Extractor, and it’s currently out of order

The existing mushroom growing spots in Agrarian Acres have been replaced

The spore extractor found in Agrarian Acres now takes several days to produce usable starters

New & Improved Features

Fleshed out the main Player page of your journal. It now lists your rank in each hobby and some general information

Added several new catachable critters, like the Foliage Elemental

A new type of chest has been added to the treasure rotation

The “Spicy” effect has been changed to be a bit more useful

Added several new “flavor critters”, like a spider, parrot, and more

Changed player sprite transitions in some situation

Improved look and behavior of cloud shadows

Increased spawn rates for items on the beach

Added large number of new items, furniture, and decorations. Look for them in villager homes throughout the village

Added concept of Elemental Affinity

Renamed Bonfire Beach to Balefire Beach

Changes to Graphics & UI

Forageable items now have a sparkle to differentiate them from plants / objects that are decorations

Added a slight drop shadow effect to all dialogue text

Add transparency to dialog boxes

Improved dialog box title and choices UI

Improved the logic for selecting the next active item in a list

Greatly improved the colors and look of your journal

Added commas to large numbers, like your current cash

Adjusted some UI terms and wording to be more consistent

You can now rotate tools (via the tool menu) using Left / Right on the D-Pad when playing with a controller

Random Name Generation – currently used for naming tamed critters – has been greatly improved

Altered music logic somewhat

Adjusted notification placement to prevent overlap when a lot of stuff is happening

Player names are now restricted to 12 total characters

Changes to Game Feel

I’m still grinding away to find that sweet spot in game feel – something that’s both evocative of retro games (which is especially important given Village Monsters’ story) while still taking modern games into account.

Player acceleration has been modified so that you move in whole pixels

Most other “partial pixel” actions are now rounded up to whole pixels

Default player speed has been somewhat increased

Further adjusted player acceleration and friction

Reduced player speed when stalking with the net

You can now control movement via the d-pad (I have no idea why I didn’t have that before!!)

The camera now tightly follows the player

Bugs Fixed

Fixed a major bug in which the world state wasn’t being properly saved

Fixed a crash when pressing “P” on your keyboard in some situations

Fixed a crash related to cutscenes not properly being set

Fixed the player sprite not changing when you transition rooms

Fixed a variety of collision issue with outdoor decorations, like benches

Fixed several collision issues in Memorial Meadows

Fixed a few issues with garden weeds

Fixed issue where beach shells would disappear

Fixed apple trees still providing apples during off seasons

Fixed an issue where critters would not flee properly if you approached them from certain angles

Fixed an issue where swinging a net drains stamina too early

Fixed some minor issues related to when the player character was in between states, or paused

Fixed the “Exit” option not working on the title screen in some instances

Hello villagers!

Today marks the release of the first major update to Village Monsters. You’ll notice the version number is now set to 0.5 – is this officially the halfway mark?!

This update was guided by players like you! Last week I asked what I should work on next and you weren’t shy in giving me an answer: bug fixes, quality of life improvements, and improvements to Odd Jobs.

Part of these changes were already released last week, so this week’s patch is meant to cap that one off!

The next planned major update is for Friday, December 6th. I’ve yet to send out a poll on what that should include, but I should have that out later this week.

Happy Thanksgiving to my fellow US villagers!

NEW

Something is causing villagers to suddenly misplace items. If you find a lost item you should return it to its owner for a nice relationship boost.

A large number of new villager conversations have been added to the game

Fish and Critter ratings now alter their price – the higher the rating, the higher the sell price

Tutorial Odd Jobs have been added to the game.

A new option has been added to make dialogue text instant

IMPROVED

Made the first attempt at re-balancing the economy. In general: individual items are worth a great deal more money, but you’ll see fewer of them per day. For example, critters spawn less, it’s harder to fish, and so on.

Hello Villagers!

There’s a new demo coming to town. It’s nicknamed Pumpkin Pie and it’s releasing on later today (November 30th.)

It’s silly for me to keep saying things like “this is the biggest and most full featured demo yet!” After all, if I’m making forward progress then by definition each demo will be bigger than the one before it.

And yet… this is seriously the biggest and most full featured demo yet. It contains tons of new things and improves loads of existing things, but more than that it’s finally representative of the kind of game you can expect next spring.

Here’s some of the headlining changes.

New Fishing

The fishing hobby has changed – again – but this time it’s final. I promise!

You dash to hook the fish before it escapes. You then mash to reel it in as fast as possible. And when the fish fights back, you clash for victory.

Grab your fishing rod and head to any body of water to test it out.

Mushroom Gardening

A new hobby has been added to the game: Mushroom Gardening.

Mushrooms are grown from spores you can purchase from the general store. Once planted they require very little effort and will happily grow by themselves. Grown mushrooms can be harvested and then sold, eaten, or cooked.

To get started check out the mushroom plots over in the Agrarian Acres. Check out the book “Mad for Mushrooms” in the library for more info.

Cooking

Another new hobby has been added to the game: Cooking.

Of all the hobbies this one is the least finished (you can only cook basic soups for now), but future releases will add to your cookbook.

To get started, visit the kitchen in Overflow and interact with the cooking pot you see there.

House Purchase

You are no longer stuck at the inn! The shack east of town has been put up for sale and the deed can be purchased from the general store.

Keep in mind it’s not cheap – even this basic plot of land costs 10,000 Skull Silver. You’ll need to find a way to make some money; catching and selling fish and critters is a good place to start.

Effects

A new “effects engine” has been added to the game. You’ve always been able to quaff potions, but this is an entirely new system with complex interactions and features.

Many items now bestow different effects when used or eaten:

Eat a Snowberry Shroom and you’ll become chilled to the bone.

Stay up too long without sleeping and you’ll become exhausted and unable to run – though you can eat food to offset these penalties.

Drink a Potion of Fast Feet and you’ll zoom around the map.

Check the player page of your journal to see which effects you’re under.

Up All Night

Your unfair curfew has finally ended.

Instead of teleporting back to bed in the middle of the night you can stay up indefinitely. To balance things out you now have an energy meter that ticks down throughout the day.

Running out of energy makes you exhausted which has a bunch of negative impacts, so you’ll want to keep it up by sleeping or eating food.

You can sleep at any time from a bed you own. Sleeping will also quickly advance time.

Improved Interiors

Many interiors – including villager homes, the village inn, and general store – have been improved. Enjoy new furniture, cozier layouts, and more personality in each building.

Mac Support

This marks the first demo where Windows, Mac, and Linux versions will release simultaneously!

Dialogue Improvements

Dialogue took a backseat with this release, though this is because its systems are largely finalized.

One big change is how villagers talk before and after you become friends. Villagers may at first come across as rude or distant, while others might be overly formal or reserved. On the other hand, you may witness complete personality changes in some villagers as they warm up to you and become close friends.

Note that you won’t be able to see these changes in the demo as they happen over the long term.

Quality of Life

As always a host of quality of life changes have been added to the game. Here’s a handful of them:

The passage of time has been further slowed to make the game more relaxing

“Helper Text” has been added to even objects in the game

Doors now tell you where they lead

Items for sale now display their name

Many interactable objects now can only be interacted with when facing a specific direction. This prevents a lot of accidental interactions

You can now sell multiple items at once to the merchant

Improved UI

Inventory and System menus have been combined into an improved Journal

Many UI elements have been cleaned up and improved

New & improved fonts

And Lots More

There’s way more changes than I can document in this post. More accurately there’s more than I want to document. But here’s a few more things you can expect:

As with the Linux releases, the Mac versions will be labeled as “Lightly Tested” until I’m more comfortable with the process. On my old (~2009) MacBook it runs but at a low performance – which I suppose is to be expected from a 9 year old laptop.

Going forward all three platforms should release at the same time, which is a very big step for our little monster game.